Firm gets deal to sound out navy ships

By BRUCE ERSKINE BUSINESS REPORTERPublished November 22, 2012 - 5:14pm

Dartmouth company contracted to analyze sonar data

A Dartmouth sound research company has been awarded a $455,400 contract to provide the Canadian military with a better idea of what, and who, is under its ships.

“It turns sound into an image,” Joe Hood, president of Akoostix Inc., said in an interview Thursday.

Akoostix’s TruView Rapid Processing and Analysis system was developed out of research the company did for Defence Research and Development Canada, with the assistance of the Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program.

The $40-million program gives qualifying companies the opportunity to have their pre-commercial products and services tested within government operations.

“It’s a good program,” Hood said.

The Defence Department’s Acoustic Data Analysis Centre will use the TruView system to help identify such things as foreign submarines, he said.

The centre analyzes all the acoustic data the Canadian military collects.

“We’re providing a post-analysis system and support,” Hood said. “This system will help analyze that data.”

He said the TruView system is “ready to go” and can be used to analyze different types of sonar data.

“It’s very flexible.”

The Defence Department paid Akoostix to do the research on the analytic technology, while the company paid for its commercial development, he said.

“Our goal was to turn the research into a system. We created the system ourselves.”